The performance of young and newly founded firms depends largely to the human capital of the firm owner. The entrepreneur is therefore one of the main success factors for the firm. Yet entrepreneurs differ considerably in their background and characteristics. Particularly, founders? individual...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of entrepreneurial experience on firm growth. According to the human capital theory, individuals who have higher ?human capital? are more successful than others. Entrepreneurial experience is a kind of human capital and, therefore, should affect...

For academic spin-offs I analyze the length of time between the founder's leaving of academia and the establishment of his firm. Technology transfer can take place even years after leaving the mother institution. A duration analysis reveals that a longer time-lag is caused by the necessity of...

Based on a large data set containing information on occupations between 1979 and 1999, this study explores the ?black box? surrounding the skill?biased technological change hypothesis by analyzing the mechanisms that induce information technologies to be complementary to employees with higher...

Total employment in Germany is supposed to increase if people could realize their desired working hours. However, this back-of-the-envelope calculation overestimates the effect of loosening hours constraints, because even in a very flexible labor market there will exist hours restrictions for...

Does heterogeneity in the educational backgrounds of the founders matter for firm success? Are team foundations more successful than single entrepreneurs? These questions are analysed using data on academic spinoffs in Germany. Firm success is measured by employment growth. I find that team...

In this paper I analyse how individuals match for for the purpose of setting up a new firm. As a theoretical basis I use the O-ring theory introduced by Kremer (1993) and applied to new firms by Fabel (2004). The O-ring theory predicts that individuals segregate between firms according to their...

Academic spin-offs are one way in which employability of university graduates is reflected. Using the ZEW spinoff-survey, this paper studies empirically the impact of human capital on the success of academic spinoffs founding in knowledge and technology intensive sectors. The focus is thereby on...

In this paper, I analyse how the survival of new firms is affected by the average ability level in the founding team, the team size, team members' homogeneity with respect to ability, and team members' heterogeneity with respect to education. As a theoretical basis, I apply the O-ring theory...